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vegetation on shore looked especially nasty, with plenty of long thorns. They would have to cut their way through, and that would be extremely slow and arduous. And a giveaway to anyone following them.
    “I guess we’re going to get wet,” Henrique said. They probed the bottom with their paddles, then gingerly lowered themselves into the water. They each grabbed a side of the canoe and started moving forward, shuffling their feet to minimize the stingray hazard. They looked back and forth, studying every ripple to make sure it wasn’t the wake of an inquisitive caiman.
    At last, they reached the obstruction. They tentatively rocked the offending log, their attention still divided between it and the river surface. The response was an angry drumming sound.
    “Down!” Henrique took a quick breath, and submerged himself.
    Maurício saw what appeared to be black smoke coming over the log, and heading straight toward them. Wasps. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands. Enough to kill them both, several times over.
    “Shit!” he agreed, and followed suit.
    Henrique had flipped the canoe, and they both swam underneath, putting their heads in the breathing space it provided. The canoe slowly floated back downstream, away from the angry insects.
    After some minutes, Henrique poked his head out of the water. No wasps attacked, so he rose further. Maurício copied him.
    “Why did you overturn the canoe? We’re going to have a devil of a time finding all our belongings. And some will be ruined, for sure.”
    “We had to use the canoe so we could just breathe quietly in place. If you swam underwater, in a panic, your flailing about might have attracted piranhas.” He paused. “Some things will float down to where we are now, and in an hour or so, it’ll be safe to go back and look for the stuff that dropped to the bottom. Provided we don’t rock the log, of course.”
    “How come we didn’t hear the buggers? Or see them flying into and out of their nest?”
    “Those were Acaba da noite , night wasps. We disturbed their beauty sleep.”
    “Jeesh. They should have a sign, ‘Night workers. Day Sleepers. Do Not Disturb.’”
    * * *
    “Trouble,” Coqui announced. “Some of the bad people are coming up this river.”
    “How many?”
    “Many.”
    Henrique cursed the inadequacies of the Manao counting system. “How big is their canoe?”
    Coqui thought about this. “It makes two of this canoe.”
    “Okay, so call it eight of them.”
    Maurício piped up. “How soon will they be here?”
    “One day, perhaps,” said Coqui.
    “Too close for comfort,” Henrique said. “They have a heavier canoe, so the logs will slow them down more than they do us. But they have more oarsmen, so in clear stretches, they’ll be faster.”
    “If they come as far as the wasp nest log, Henrique, they’ll see where we cut around. Then they’ll be sure we’re up here.”
    “We need to set up an ambush.”
    “I know,” said Maurício. “We can half cut through a tree, then, when they reach the vicinity of the wasp nest, fell it. It drops on the log, and rouses the wasps. And they sting the bastards to death.”
    Henrique sighed. “Have you ever felled a tree before? Can you imagine how hard it is to control where it falls in a forest like this one, dense, with lianas everywhere? And if the wasps didn’t kill them all, then the wasp swarm would be between us and the survivors.
    “We’ll try to kill them with arrows, not wasps.”
    * * *
    Henrique, Coqui and Maurício had bows, but Maurício wasn’t a particularly good archer. He was a good shot, but the musket which they had carefully preserved over the months and leagues of their flight was now entertaining the local fish life. Kasiri only had a knife, and so she had been cautioned to stay back.
    The slavers’ canoe came into view. Coqui gave a bird call, to warn the others to engage, and then fired. His arrow took down the rear man, who was steering. Henrique’s shot killed the poleman